A Generation from Partition*

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kitchen floor black snake.

carcass slithered, before wooden

sticks dismembered its body.

                      a little girl’s scream is my

                      exact location.                Is this genetic

                      fatigue?          How these cells multiply.

let’s go to the light

garden father. the yarn

will stop unraveling,

just enough to hold red

soft in our hands.

                      kid I’m waiting to die

                      he shakes his hand.

                      splattered paint.

I orbit the space I left

                      him alone.

                      there is more than one

                      language we fall through.

*The title is from a tweet by Tanaïs, author of the novel Bright Lines.